Difficult Matchups? - Ask Matchup Questions Here

[Meccs]

I use Doc as a secondary and its painful how bad his recovery is.

 

[ORANGEtheGORILLa]

I've donesmash marathons and I found the worst recoveries were doc /yoshi for not having one but he's still top 8/ lungi for not being able to use tornado, donkey, Dhd for having very easy gimp ability.

 

[ORANGEtheGORILLa]

MOTHER 4 hype (pls look it up) it would hep alot

 

[Uffe]

I feel Ness' major difficult matchups from what I've experienced are most of the zoners. (Toon Link, Duck Hunt, etc). Other than like Mega Man, which is probably even or in Ness' favor.

Other MUs I feel that Ness might struggle with are Rosalina, Sheik, and Greninja.

I am not 100% sure though, this is just what I feel.

I hate Rosaluma. Sheik, she's tough. Tink isn't too bad. You have to really rush him while playing defensive. Your PSI Magnet against his Bombs are useful, too. I've been having trouble with Bowser. I've lost against each one I've fought, it's not even funny. That creature is too good in this game. Duck Hunt is pretty challenging. I fought a really good player by the name of Lithium. We had one match where he timed me out. I nearly killed him at the last second, too.

 

[neomadgic]

Like most people are saying. I believe Rosalina is probably our hardest matchup. Ness has very good grab game, but Luma negates that. Rosalina can gimp us off stage. The only time that I can get momentum, is when I KO luma first. But Luma respawns so fast that it's not even worth it sometimes.

I hate fighting Tlink, Link, and DHD because they camp me pretty hard. I'd say Tlink and DHD have advantages over us. But Link's poor recovery gives us an even, if not, + matchup.

 

[ORANGEtheGORILLa]

Ness has serious gimpability with Rosaluma. If you try to recover she can easily gravitational pull the thunder and leave you stranded, yet you can do the same with psi magnet to other ness players.

 

[ORANGEtheGORILLa]

Down air can easily debate alot of characters. since it has been debuffed, and is a unreliable spike you can combo into itself. Ive be using dair off the stage more than upair.

 

[Code Bread]

Both those posts were really helpful, ORANGEtheGORILLa, thanks.

 

[Ranias]

I've played many many games on For Glory. My opinions might be biased towards FD stages and towards online strategies as I haven't played in tournament yet.

On the topic of hard matchups:

• The hardest matchup for me has been Rosalina since she has such quick moves with disjointed hitboxes, Luma, and her Down-B can grab PK Thunder... She's beatable if you manage to hit a PK Fire and approach well. Also, you have to go all in when you manage to kill Luma.
• Sheik has been the second hardest. Her needles can be annoying, especially on FD, and she fast-falls so it can be difficult to PK Thunder juggle her. However, it can be difficult for her to secure a kill on you (and anyone else); just try to survive and kill her before she kills you. You can also absorb her Side B explosion and roll cancel it if she ever uses it.

I think some problems people here are having are that they aren't utilizing Ness's exploitable strengths. Grounded PK Fire can trap heavy/big characters easily if they are landing or approaching via ground. PSI Magnet can absorb most if not all energy based attacks (even bombs and Mega Man's lemons and charge shot), and you can also cancel PSI Magnet by flicking back on the control pad after absorbing.

One strength in particular is how amazing PK Thunder is:

• PK Thunder's tail can be used as a gimping tool at the beginning of your opponent's Up-B recovery. This can shut down characters with predictable recoveries like Link, Shulk, and Little Mac.
• Most characters can be PK Thunder juggled. Try to loop PK Thunder into the path your opponent is falling. That way even if they airdodge, they will be hit. If they airdodge into the ground, you can follow up with a PKT2 by hitting yourself quickly into where your opponent is landing. If they try to counter/reflect/absorb, you can stall the PK Thunder by looping around then quickly hitting them when they end it. PK thunder juggle works really well against floaty characters. Just be careful of ground pounds (Toon Link, Bowser, Yoshi, Kirby), fast fallers (Sheik, Greninja, ZSS), and reflectors/absorbers (Ness, G&W, Fox).

BTW, this is my first post on this board, so sorry if I'm being dumb about something.

 

[Code Bread]

I've played many many games on For Glory. I have about a 95% winrate when I play as Ness. My opinions might be biased towards FD stages and towards online strategies as I haven't played in tournament yet.

On the topic of hard matchups:

• The hardest matchup for me has been Rosalina since she has such quick moves with disjointed hitboxes, Luma, and her Down-B can grab PK Thunder... She's beatable if you manage to hit a PK Fire and approach well. Also, you have to go all in when you manage to kill Luma.
• Sheik has been the second hardest. Her needles can be annoying, especially on FD, and she fast-falls so it can be difficult to PK Thunder juggle her. However, it can be difficult for her to secure a kill on you (and anyone else); just try to survive and kill her before she kills you. You can also absorb her Side B explosion and roll cancel it if she ever uses it.

I think some problems people here are having are that they aren't utilizing Ness's exploitable strengths. Grounded PK Fire can trap heavy/big characters easily if they are landing or approaching via ground. PSI Magnet can absorb most if not all energy based attacks (even bombs and Mega Man's lemons and charge shot), and you can also cancel PSI Magnet by flicking back on the control pad after absorbing.

One strength in particular is how amazing PK Thunder is:

• PK Thunder's tail can be used as a gimping tool at the beginning of your opponent's Up-B recovery. This can shut down characters with predictable recoveries like Link, Shulk, and Little Mac.
• Most characters can be PK Thunder juggled. Try to loop PK Thunder into the path your opponent is falling. That way even if they airdodge, they will be hit. If they airdodge into the ground, you can follow up with a PKT2 by hitting yourself quickly into where your opponent is landing. If they try to counter/reflect/absorb, you can stall the PK Thunder by looping around then quickly hitting them when they end it. PK thunder juggle works really well against floaty characters. Just be careful of ground pounds (Toon Link, Bowser, Yoshi, Kirby), fast fallers (Sheik, Greninja, ZSS), and reflectors/absorbers (Ness, G&W, Fox).

BTW, this is my first post on this board, so sorry if I'm being dumb about something.

Welcome to Smashboards, home of too many self-righteous nerds. It's good to have another Ness main.

I haven't really found a Sheik that's given me a hard time in the matchup, but I primarily blame the skill levels of said Sheiks. Since so many people have salted about it I'm going to assume you all are right about how difficult the raw matchup is.
Could you elaborate on PSI Magnet canceling? I haven't done it or heard of it, but it sounds incredibly useful.
You haven't been dumb about anything. Your post is more in depth than 9999% of Smashboard posts.

EDIT: btw, does anyone know if Ness' utilt is fast and ranged enough to hit ground pounds out of the sky?

 

[Ranias]

Welcome to Smashboards, home of too many self-righteous nerds. It's good to have another Ness main.

I haven't really found a Sheik that's given me a hard time in the matchup, but I primarily blame the skill levels of said Sheiks. Since so many people have salted about it I'm going to assume you all are right about how difficult the raw matchup is.
Could you elaborate on PSI Magnet canceling? I haven't done it or heard of it, but it sounds incredibly useful.
You haven't been dumb about anything. Your post is more in depth than 9999% of Smashboard posts.

EDIT: btw, does anyone know if Ness' utilt is fast and ranged enough to hit ground pounds out of the sky?

Yeah, most Sheiks are easy, but the best Sheiks are really hard.

I learned PSI Magnet canceling from this board. You basically just input a roll direction or jump right after you absorb. It's really easy, and you almost always want to do it.

I never really use Up Tilt. I think its range is too small to be useful for anything but niche combos. As for being safe vs. ground pounds, i think PK Thunder's tail can hit Yoshi's and Toon Link's at least. You can try to Up Air against Yoshi's and Bowser's if you are brave, but you can usually just go the safer route and dodge it on the ground and try to follow up with a PK Fire or dash attack.

 

[Unkie Mike]

I hate that match up too. fortunately, keep in mind that luma being there means that you get to pull off guaranteed pk fire pillars. luma will stay stuck there too so you can approach rosa while luma is there, or you can finish him off (although he will appear in 8 seconds again).

The worst thing about the match up is all her disjointed aerials and tilts, which don't really produce much knockback, but enough to put you in really bad positions off stage, or worse, take your jump away, in which case that is a guaranteed stock if your opponent knows what they're doing.

You can't even rely on pk thunder to camp, since that down b covers so much ground, and she can spam it.

Ness's best kill move which is his back throw becomes much harder to pull off as well.

Something I noticed the other day was that you can explode PK Flash as it gets sucked up by her down B, killing her instantly in sub-100 percentages. So if you face a Rosalina who is quick to absorb things, it's worth a try. I surprised a Rosalina with it by throwing it out instead of PK Thunder as she tried to gimp my recovery. I was going to fall to my death, of course, but she died fast enough to give me the game.

btw, does anyone know if Ness' utilt is fast and ranged enough to hit ground pounds out of the sky?

Not sure about utilt; I don't use it because it seems to be a garbage move all-around. The safer option to me seems to be a PK Thunder tail whip, which goes through Yoshi, Bowser, and Dedede's ground pounds, as well as Sheik/ZSS/Sonic's divekicks, all of which are invulnerable to PK Thunder's head.

 

[thesage]

I believe I've beaten Bowser's down b with u-tilt.

 

[kennypu]

I believe I've beaten Bowser's down b with u-tilt.

lol that's scary. much safer to just stop it with tail of pk thunder. if you time it right you can do it right into a pkt2 as well.

 

[deepseadiva]

Ness has serious gimpability with Rosaluma. If you try to recover she can easily gravitational pull the thunder and leave you stranded, yet you can do the same with psi magnet to other ness players.

HAAAAAAAAA

This is so sad. How much range does Gravi Pull have? I know it's pretty large. You might want to switch characters at this point.

 

[Luco]

Rosalina is, i'm now very very sure, our worst match-up. @ NAKAT is our best player right now and he found Dabuz really, really hard in winners finals last weekend, or at least that's how I saw it, he can jump in to mention his thoughts on it if he so desires.

But yeah, it's just such an incredibly difficult offstage game coupled with a pressuring onstage one. Our PK Fire is certainly great in this MU due to Luma but at the end of the day Luma is only ever down for 8 seconds and you're dealing with them both, and even without Luma Rosalina is still a massive threat and i'm not even sure if Rosalina by herself vs us is in our favour or not.

Granted, I think it's similar to the Lucas - Falco MU in Brawl where the MU FELT like a -2 or -3 when it was really only -1. I suspect this MU will turn out to be a -2 but it FEELS like a -3 because although we have options, when Rosalina gets her way, she REALLY gets her way.

It's such a silly match-up, and i'm not really someone to switch to secondaries or tertiaries if my main isn't working out except if i'm co-maining like I did in Brawl. So far Ness is my only real ace in the sleeve for this game.

 

[Code Bread]

lol I throw out Donkey Kong.

Does anyone have an idea of a strong secondary for Ness? I pick mains by how much I like their playstyle, but it could be useful for someone in a tournament setting.

 

[thesage]

I am also picking up Jigglypuff and she has good matchups vs. Shiek and Rosalina apparently.

I think it's worth it just to take Lucas' pkt for the Rosalina matchup. Not like you can really juggle her anyways.

 

[NAKAT]

Hello all <3

 

[ORANGEtheGORILLa]

lol I throw out Donkey Kong.

Does anyone have an idea of a strong secondary for Ness? I pick mains by how much I like their playstyle, but it could be useful for someone in a tournament setting.

You can't really ask others for mains... Everyone has different favorites and playstyles. So if you have a chance just go for a whack pick.

 

[ORANGEtheGORILLa]

HAAAAAAAAA

This is so sad. How much range does Gravi Pull have? I know it's pretty large. You might want to switch characters at this point.

I've neer seen such a disrespectful smash hero... More like smash minion loser. Get out of the ness thread.

 

[Code Bread]

You can't really ask others for mains... Everyone has different favorites and playstyles. So if you have a chance just go for a whack pick.

I wasn't asking others for mains?

 

[Unkie Mike]

I don't really think it's been long enough to pick a secondary (there's still so much Ness to figure out), but I dabble in Wendy from time to time. She's a harassment character like Ness, and her aerials are similar. She's great at limiting the ground options of rushdown characters with mechakoopa and cannonball. Mindgames a-plenty with clown car and up B, too. Those are fun.

Also her jab combo kills off the edge at around 150%. Which is a nice punish if your opponent eats the last punch.

 

[deepseadiva]

I've neer seen such a disrespectful smash hero... More like smash minion loser. Get out of the ness thread.

It's not disrespect. I'm just being honest about the characters weakness. xD

Ness basically does not have a recovery against Rosalina. I don't know how solvable an issue that is and might warrant a character switch.

 

[ORANGEtheGORILLa]

It's not disrespect. I'm just being honest about the characters weakness. xD

Ness basically does not have a recovery against Rosalina. I don't know how solvable an issue that is and might warrant a character switch.

Everybody has secondaries dude...

 

[deepseadiva]

Yea and that's fine. No need to get offended and call me names. xD

So Ness loses to Rosalina. Fortunately Ness mains should be used to unwinnable matchups.

 

[Code Bread]

Everybody has secondaries dude...

They do? Maybe I'm just not paying attention, but I usually see someone using a main and then knowing how to fiddle around with every other character. I don't know, but most people say that secondaries rarely are a factor in a player's success. i dunno i dunno i dunno.

Hello all <3

Forgot to respond to this. Your Ness is a king. Thanks for all the entertaining sets.

 

[Luco]

I feel like you're under-estimating Ness' recovery. Ness' recovery is better in this game than it was in Brawl and one of the fundamental aspects of his recovery in Brawl I learnt and saw from players such as Shaky taught me that things like saving DJ to put yourself in better positions matter. Sometimes as Ness you have to recover higher/lower and take that extra bit of damage. But with a buffed recovery I think it's a bit of a stretch to say Ness has no recovery against Rosalina, because it's viable to use PKT from further out and not get GPed. It's not the best situation, sure... but it's gotten me back in my matches versus some rather decent Rosaluma players. =)

 

[ORANGEtheGORILLa]

Yea and that's fine. No need to get offended and call me names. xD

So Ness loses to Rosalina. Fortunately Ness mains should be used to unwinnable matchups.

Sword end characters like Marth, have been debuffed a lot so ness mains have a lot of the upper edge.

 

[ORANGEtheGORILLa]

Hello all <3

Keep rekting smash tournaments dude. Get ness up the teir!

 

[Kirby Phelps (PK)]

What can Ness do against a spammy Dr. Mario? A friend of mine plays Doc and it's so difficult to approach. If I do manage to get in, he'll just grab me or something equally as punishing. I posted a video in the critique thread if anyone wants to see what I mean.

 

[ORANGEtheGORILLa]

What can Ness do against a spammy Dr. Mario? A friend of mine plays Doc and it's so difficult to approach. If I do manage to get in, he'll just grab me or something equally as punishing. I posted a video in the critique thread if anyone wants to see what I mean.

Spam back. I don't know. Nair debates lots of projectiles too, sooooo uh.

 

[291C]

What can Ness do against a spammy Dr. Mario? A friend of mine plays Doc and it's so difficult to approach. If I do manage to get in, he'll just grab me or something equally as punishing. I posted a video in the critique thread if anyone wants to see what I mean.

I would try baiting him out of that position on the edge of the stage. Jump over his pills toward him to put him in a defensive state. Once he's shielding, the pill output stops and that should give you more options. There are some parts in the video that you actually do that and that's why the spam doesn't really occur until late first stock. I also remember a few parts in your video where he actually does shield after the pill spam had been in affect for a while because he thinks you're coming in for an attack, and that ultimately gave you more breathing room.

Just don't get punished by him once he gets out of his shield! :o

 

[Uffe]

Like most people are saying. I believe Rosalina is probably our hardest matchup. Ness has very good grab game, but Luma negates that. Rosalina can gimp us off stage. The only time that I can get momentum, is when I KO luma first. But Luma respawns so fast that it's not even worth it sometimes.

I hate fighting Tlink, Link, and DHD because they camp me pretty hard. I'd say Tlink and DHD have advantages over us. But Link's poor recovery gives us an even, if not, + matchup.

I keep reading and hearing that Ness has a good grab game. What does that mean? If it's that he's able to grab his opponents without much of a problem, then someone needs to tell me how to do that, because I can hardly grab worth beans with Ness unlike his Brawl counterpart. Toon Link may be a little better than Ness, but he doesn't camp as good as Duck Hunt. At least when you're fighting Toon Link, you can absorb his Bombs, and even get close enough to do damage, whereas Duck Hunt can just time you out. Toon Link has a harder time doing that if you ask me. I hate fighting Rosaluma. You're better off trying to recover upwards than down below, because at least you can make it back from above, assuming you're not in a position where you'll get smashed.

 

[Code Bread]

imo Ness' grab range in this game is terrible. I don't know the frames or how his range has been before, but it's an issue for me, especially when lag is a factor.

But Ness' actual grabs are great. His pummels are incredibly fast, his back throw kills extremely early, and his down throw allows for incredible followups. I even use his front throw from time to time. Forward throwing someone off the edge gives you gimp and juggle opportunities because it doesn't throw that far.

 

[Uffe]

imo Ness' grab range in this game is terrible. I don't know the frames or how his range has been before, but it's an issue for me, especially when lag is a factor.

But Ness' actual grabs are great. His pummels are incredibly fast, his back throw kills extremely early, and his down throw allows for incredible followups. I even use his front throw from time to time. Forward throwing someone off the edge gives you gimp and juggle opportunities because it doesn't throw that far.

His grab range reminds me of Melee Ness'. If there was a Jump Cancel in this game, it would really help Ness as it did in Melee. It has been a while since I've played Brawl, but I do recall him sliding forward when he grabbed. This time, it seems that slide is shorter.

 

[ORANGEtheGORILLa]

His grab range reminds me of Melee Ness'. If there was a Jump Cancel in this game, it would really help Ness as it did in Melee. It has been a while since I've played Brawl, but I do recall him sliding forward when he grabbed. This time, it seems that slide is shorter.

Yes ness grab range is short likes it been in previous games, but grab game was weekend severely in this game. I try not to worry about it because if you get a grab you can go for a good followup.

 

[Luco]

Ness' running grab is similar-ish to brawl with perhaps a minor nerf. His standing grab has always been terrible, but what peeps mean by 'good grab game' is that with the decent running/good pivot grab, he gets a lot of followups, guaranteed true combos on most of the cast and an advantageous position on those who don't. His Bthrow is still as powerful as ever (it was never nerfed; same with Bair, it's just vectoring makes it harder to kill generally) and his Uthrow sets him up for juggles with a powerful PKT.

 

[kirby509]

How do you deal with Pac-man? It seems like he can camp Ness with his fruit and I can't seem to approach...

 

[Ranias]

How do you deal with Pac-man? It seems like he can camp Ness with his fruit and I can't seem to approach...

Approaching via air seems the way to go vs Pac-Man since he can't attack diagonally. Short hop F-air, B-air, or N-air.

You can PK Fire his Hydrant to quickly cause it to bounce as your attack. You can also roll around the hydrant or the water spurts to help approach.

Pac-Man is vulnerable to PK Thunder juggle. Watch out if you are directly under him though. You can try jumping to his side when he is above you before sending the thunder out to prevent him from launching his Hydrant on you.

Overall you want to shut down his fruit camping. The sooner you harass him out of charging his fruit, the better.